The LaSalle Quartet's 1975 complete Schoenberg string quartets remain unsurpassed for their fusion of technical mastery and emotional depth. Four decades of ensemble familiarity with this demanding idiom yields interpretations that reveal the modernist angst beneath the twelve-tone method. Essential for anyone serious about twentieth-century chamber music; revelatory for those who've dismissed Schoenberg as cerebral austerity.
⚡ Quick Answer: The LaSalle Quartet's 1975 Deutsche Grammophon recording of Schoenberg's string quartets represents the definitive complete survey. Their deep familiarity with the composer's vision, combined with pristine engineering and scholarly annotation, transforms potentially austere twelve-tone works into emotionally compelling excavations of twentieth-century modernism.
There is a particular kind of loneliness that only Schoenberg understood — the loneliness of standing in the ruins of something beautiful that you yourself helped demolish.
The LaSalle Quartet spent the better part of the early 1970s inside that ruin, and what they brought back from Deutsche Grammophon's sessions with this four-disc set is one of the great acts of musical excavation in the recording catalog. Released in 1975, it remains the authoritative complete survey of Schoenberg's four string quartets, plus the early D major quartet that he chose never to publish. The LaSalle — Walter Levin and Henry Meyer on violins, Peter Kamnitzer on viola, Jack Kirstein on cello — had been playing together since their formation at Juilliard in 1946. By the time they made this record, they had been living with Schoenberg for decades. It shows.
What These Quartets Actually Are
People avoid this music for the wrong reason. They hear "atonal" and assume they will feel nothing. But the Second Quartet, with soprano Heather Harper floating above the strings on Stefan George's poetry — Ich löse mich in Tönen — is one of the most emotionally naked pieces of the twentieth century. Schoenberg was still grieving, still furious, still recognizably human when he wrote it in 1908.
The Third and Fourth Quartets, written under the twelve-tone method, are harder. They ask more. But they reward patience in the way a dense novel does on a second read — the architecture reveals itself slowly, and then suddenly you can't stop hearing it.
The Sessions, The Sound
Deutsche Grammophon recorded this in Munich, and the engineering is clinical in the best sense. Every inner voice sits in its own space. You can follow Kamnitzer's viola through passages where lesser recordings bury it entirely, and that matters enormously in music where the counterpoint is the argument.
The production notes and accompanying essays — this was released as a box set with substantial scholarly annotation — were considered almost as important as the performances themselves. Schoenberg scholar and biographer H.H. Stuckenschmidt contributed extensively. DG understood they were making a document, not just a product.
Walter Levin spoke in interviews about the quartet's approach: not to soften the edges, not to perform these works as if they were exotic objects to be handled carefully, but to play them with the same physical commitment you'd bring to Beethoven. That conviction is audible. There is no tentativeness here, no sense that the players are navigating around the difficulty. They walk straight into it.
The unpublished D major Quartet — written around 1897, posthumously catalogued as part of the complete works — functions almost as a prologue to the set. It's late romantic, confident, completely conventional. Hearing it before you reach the Second Quartet makes the distance Schoenberg traveled feel vertiginous.
I came back to this box after years away and was genuinely shaken by how much I'd forgotten about listening at this level of attention. Put it on in a quiet room. Not as background. Give it the same silence you'd give a difficult conversation with someone you love.
Further Reading
- Deutsche Grammophon vs Decca Sound: Two Ways to Hear Classical
- What to Listen for in Classical Music (And Actually Hear It)
- Best Sounding Classical Recordings on Vinyl Worth Owning
🎵 Key Takeaways
- 🎻 The LaSalle Quartet's 1975 Deutsche Grammophon complete survey remains definitive—four decades later, no rival recording has displaced it.
- 🔊 DG's Munich engineering isolates every inner voice with clinical precision, making the counterpoint-driven architecture audible in ways lesser recordings obscure entirely.
- 📖 The Second Quartet (1908) is emotionally raw modernism, not austere intellectualism—Heather Harper's soprano over Stefan George's text proves Schoenberg was still grieving and human when he wrote it.
- ⏱️ Levin and company treat twelve-tone works with the same physical commitment as Beethoven, avoiding the cautious exoticism that cripples most atonal recordings.
- 💿 The unpublished D major Quartet (c. 1897) functions as prologue, making Schoenberg's harmonic leap to the Second Quartet feel genuinely vertiginous.
Why is the LaSalle Quartet's 1975 recording considered the definitive Schoenberg string quartet cycle?
The LaSalle Quartet had been together since 1946 and spent decades absorbing Schoenberg's vision before entering Deutsche Grammophon's Munich studios, bringing a level of interpretive authority that remains unmatched. Their refusal to soften edges or treat the work as exotic—instead bringing the same physical commitment as they would to Beethoven—produced performances that let the architecture and counterpoint speak without apology. Combined with clinical engineering that isolates every inner voice and substantial scholarly annotation from Schoenberg biographer H.H. Stuckenschmidt, DG created a document rather than merely a product.
What makes Schoenberg's Second Quartet so emotionally accessible compared to his later twelve-tone works?
Written in 1908 while Schoenberg was still grieving and furious, the Second Quartet pairs Stefan George's poetry with Heather Harper's soprano floating above the strings, making it one of the most emotionally naked twentieth-century pieces precisely because it predates the twelve-tone method that governs the Third and Fourth Quartets. The later works demand more patience—they reward close listening the way a dense novel does on a second reading, with their architecture slowly revealing itself until the counterpoint becomes inescapable.
What is the unpublished D major Quartet and why does including it matter?
Written around 1897 and catalogued posthumously, this early quartet is late romantic, confident, and completely conventional—essentially pre-Schoenberg. Its inclusion as a prologue to the set makes the distance Schoenberg traveled to atonality and twelve-tone composition feel genuinely vertiginous, grounding listeners in what he was abandoning rather than jumping directly into the modernist rupture.
How does the Deutsche Grammophon engineering specifically serve the music's needs?
The clinical Munich recording spaces each inner voice distinctly in its own acoustic space, allowing listeners to follow counterpoints—particularly the viola parts—that lesser recordings bury entirely. This separation is essential in Schoenberg's quartets where the counterpoint is the argument itself, making the engineering choice fundamentally interpretive rather than merely technical.
Further Reading
- Deutsche Grammophon vs Decca Sound: Two Ways to Hear Classical
- What to Listen for in Classical Music (And Actually Hear It)
- Best Sounding Classical Recordings on Vinyl Worth Owning
Further Reading